Century Long Punishment
by Stargategeek
Summary: My attempt at a one-shot. The idea just sort of came to me, excuse me if it's completely out there. On the eve of Ashley's birthdays Nikola remembers a dark secret he as been keeping for over a century.


_**Century Long Punishment**_

She never had any reason to believe she was not his.

In fact, he'd bet she wanted her to be his, that way she'd still have a piece of him, the good part of him, the part she had fallen in love with.

Not like it could be anyone else's, she had never been with any other man at that point, well not any man she could remember.

But he could…

Nikola Tesla sat in his chair in Helen's office, a grand armchair pushed into the farthest corner, where he could observe in peace.

Helen sat at her desk, rifling through photo albums silently, in her own world.

She knew he was there, watching her, she assumed for voyeuristic reasons, he had always loved watching her.

At Oxford she had caught him countless times staring at her from a window, though he never had caught her watching him.

She secretly enjoyed the silent attention he paid to her, made her feel wanted.

He, on the other hand was not staring at her for some perverse fantasy of her spread-eagled over the top of the desk and him being the soul puppet master to her gyrations. Not at the moment any ways.

This time he had other thoughts in his head, most of them pertaining to the subject of the photos Helen was sifting through.

Ashley. Almost a year to the day when the Cabal had taken her away from Helen, he knew that's why she had the albums out.

It in fact was Ashley's birthday tomorrow.

This had set him on his current train of thought.

Yes, John's last gift to Helen before he went psycho; a baby, a perfect, human baby. Bright blues eyes like her father, bright blonde hair like her mother, and the sarcastic wit of a trucker.

He had the pleasure of meeting her once, under an assumed name, and she certainly hadn't the time to recognize him before she had gone super psycho.

Helen believed she was a lot like John, but that's not what Nikola saw.

Sure, she was violent and tough to boot, but John's violence wasn't hereditary as current discoveries had made known.

She was smart but impatient, quick but lethal, and her blue eyes were much more sheer than John's oceanic orbs.

Everyone just assumed from the get-go that she was John's, they had no reason to believe otherwise; the children believed Helen's every word like it was scripture. Even John himself believed that there was no other possibility. And because of this belief Helen wouldn't even think of running a paternity test on the child, no shade of a doubt would cause her to double-check on the origins of her offspring.

Only he knew.

He remembered the night, as if it had happened yesterday.

Helen's tear-streaked and heartbroken face barging into his room at the Inn in the middle of the night; bottle in hand, hair down and messy, and clothes hardly befitting a lady of Victorian sensibilities.

He had not been able to get a word out before she was on him, her strength keeping his arms pinned above his head.

She was like kryptonite to him, his abilities refused to work, to push her off and make her come to her senses. The liquor was hot on her breath, and her drunken determination was solid, and he was hopeless to refuse her, despite every ounce of logic in his mind screaming "I don't want her like this!"

But he was hardly in a place to argue, especially when she had leant down to his ear and drawled seductively. _"Take me."_

Damn the power she had over him.

He was gone by then, taken away by his own desire for her, despite her condition; he pretended it was normal, that she was normal, and really wanted him.

His lips crashed into hers, and he tasted salt and brandy. Her hands left his arms and fell into his hair, disheveling it as she ravaged him with her mouth.

His hands shot to her waist, she was wearing a man's trousers and a man's shirt, nothing else, and that excited him as he saw her chest just barely through the thin cotton material.

His lips descended to her neck, and his blood rushed more as he felt her blood rush under his lips. His medication prevented him from biting but nothing could stop the intoxicating feeling under his kisses.

Then she was under him, her frantic and clumsy hands removing his sleeping shirt.

His hands longing to caress the skin underneath her cotton shirt, but he lost all thought when she groped him through his trousers, drunkenly giggling in her own arousal.

The clothes came off quicker, the kisses became more frantic, and his lust became more rampant.

They twisted and tangled together, long into the night, until her final cry came and she kissed him sloppily, letting her own exhaustion and drunken state put her to sleep, the moment effectively erased from her memory in that instant.

But not his…

"Nikola, will you please tell me what is so fascinating that you must watch me so intently," came Helen's voice, pulling him back into the present.

"It's nothing, just admiring is all…Can not the great Helen Magnus take a little admiration?" he teased.

"Well there's admiration and then there's you, your kind of admiration makes me feel naked," she sighed.

"Well that can be arranged," he teased.

"Not on your life, Nikola," she laughed back and went back to her photos.

If only she knew…

She had been naked once in his life, she had been his for a moment, a forgotten moment. It was like she had carved her initials into his flesh, branding him for life. He was hers, whole-heartedly, no woman could take him away from her from that point on. She had solidified herself as his muse.

He had her in his arms, for a moment, but when he had realized what he had done he had let go, backing away from her, guilt-ridden and feeling the need to take himself outside and beat the snot out of him.

He would've done that to any other man who would've taken advantage of Helen like he just did. When he learned about John he had sailed to England as fast as he could so he could take care of John himself, he wanted to grab him by his little teleporting neck and beat him shitless.

Now he was no better then that two-faced whore-killer lunatic, except he was worse because he had given in.

He moved to the very far corner of the room, trying desperately to create distance between himself and her form, her naked form.

He cursed in Serbian and smacked himself with the palm of his hand.

If Helen woke up and remembered she would hate him forever, she would throw him out of her life completely, and vampire or not, he would die without her.

He escaped to the washroom and plunged himself under frightfully cold water, shocking his senses, torturously long.

After a while, when he calmed himself into a rational state he dried and dressed and took a clean shirt of his out of the chest of drawers and a pair of briefs and slacks and he covered her with them, pulling the blanket over her and kissing her forehead. If she drank enough she wouldn't remember, then they could go on.

"Don't you have work to do? You know, besides undressing me with your eyes," said Helen again,

"I've given myself the night off, I can choose to spend it where I like," he said nonchalantly.

"Well that's as close as you're getting," she muttered and he laughed.

"Seriously, why do you think that when ever I look at you I am picturing some obscene act, maybe I just enjoy the way your hair moves when you turn your head, or the way your eyes glisten in the right light, can't I just admire how beautiful you are without being labeled a sex offender," he said raising his hands for emphasis.

"Because most times you are staring at me and picturing some obscene act, you don't look at humans as things of beauty, you see them as toys to mess with, you always have," she said rather bitterly and he looked down.

"Not always," he said softly.

"Name once!" she challenged absentmindedly.

"It was Spring 1884, I was visiting you at your father's home in London, you were sitting out in the garden by the water fountain, full moon above you, I just happened to peek my head out the window and saw you, sitting on the fountains edge, your hand was skimming across the surface, I swear there was nothing more beautiful," he looked at her and she looked up from her photos, her face dumb-shocked.

"That was before I told you about my courting John, wasn't it?" she said sadly, her own memories seeing his heartbreak at the news. James and Nigel couldn't have been more pleased, her father had given his blessing to John, but Nikola, watching from a distance couldn't have looked more crushed, and she had known him long enough at that point to recognize it. At the time she ignored it, not letting Nikola's feelings ruin her happy ones, and she was happy with John.

But now she couldn't shake that look from her mind, the way the light in his eyes just died like a candle being snuffed out.

He held strong, pretending that the announcement of their courting wasn't shattering the world around him, his pride keeping him from letting John know he'd won.

Looking back at all of it she realized Nikola had been in love with her from the moment they'd met, so obvious she wanted to kick herself.

Helen looked back at Nikola.

"I'm sorry, I forget sometimes that you have a soul," he chuckled lightly.

"Yes, and feelings too, but I'll get over them," he leaned back in his armchair and continued to watch her. "When you found out you were pregnant, who told you?"

Helen looked up a little flabbergasted.

"Uhh, James, I had been feeling sick so he did some private tests for me," she said standing up and putting the photo album back in it's place and taking the next one.

"Did James tell you who the father is?" asked Nikola.

"He didn't have to, we all very well knew who was the father," said Helen with a slight huff.

"Did you never think for a moment it could be someone else's?"

"What are you getting at, Nikola? That I was the virgin mother bearing the child of the abnormal god?"

"Of course not, just a question," he stated flatly.

"Is this what the whole evening has been about? To come in here and insult me on the eve of Ashley's birthday! What is wrong with you, Nikola?" she shouted.

"No, I-"

"Does it give you some perverse sense of pleasure to torture me this way? Ashley was John's, period! You arrogant asshole!" she threw the photo album on to the desk angrily.

"You obviously don't remember," he muttered and stood up.

"What is that supposed to mean?" she shouted.

"NOTHING!" he cried back, effectively silencing her.

His face, just like it had been all those years ago, that rejected, heartbroken face, and she couldn't understand why. It was not his daughter that died almost a year ago.

"Why are you like this, Nikola?" she nearly pleaded, she wanted the truth from him.

"Because I am," he spat bitterly and walked out.

"_This is Ashley's, before she was changed."_

"_You realize that if I do this the weapon will be completely effective…I mean completely."_

He shouldn't have, he shouldn't have taken a drop of that blood and ran that test, confirming what he had believed for over a century, James had told him why Helen felt sick all those years ago and it scared him beyond belief.

After that night he had seeked ways to punish himself, he set sail back to New York, he denied himself what he wanted more than anything, he punished himself by separating himself, at least that's what he thought, now he realized his true punishment; his deepest darkest secret.

Over a century ago he had fallen in love with a woman that would never love him back, in one moment when he let her manipulate him, take control over him, in bringing her closer to him for a moment, he had set them apart for an eternity.

His punishment isn't that he will never get the dream of having his arms wrapped around her, or that he will never be close to her as he once was, his punishment, is that over a century ago he had become a father, and he couldn't tell a soul.'

**_~~~~Author's Notes~~~~_**

This was meant to be a one-shot, but if i get enough reviews i'll start trying to figure out a sequel, but only if there's enough of you readers who want a sequel.


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